This invention relates to printers, and more particularly to techniques for providing printer output in a desired order.
High-end printers on the market today are typically available, either as a standard feature or more often an optional feature, with a duplexer system to enable two-sided printing. A primary purpose of a duplexer is to turn-over the print media after printing on a first or xe2x80x9cfrontxe2x80x9d side, so that an image can be placed on the second or xe2x80x9cbackxe2x80x9d side of the print media. Typically, for the example of a laser printer, the print media starts out in the printer input tray, is picked from the input tray, and transported to a printer registration assembly. After being deskewed by the registration assembly, the media is then transported through the imaging and fusing areas to a diverter assembly. The diverter assembly typically has two moveable paper guides that determine by their position the flow of the media. The print engine firmware controls electric solenoids to determine the position of these guides. The first guide or diverter determines whether the sheet is diverted into the duplexer, or is allowed to continue on to one of the output destinations. The second diverter determines whether the sheet will be diverted to the face-down output bin or will continue straight out of the engine to the face-up output bin.
The face-up output bin is typically used for heavy media, envelopes, overhead transparency (OHT) stock and labels in a conventional printer. This output bin also gives the printer an essentially xe2x80x9cstraight-throughxe2x80x9d paper path if media is printed from the multi-purpose tray.
A problem arises when output devices are attached to the printer. The most convenient location to do this is at the face-up output bin, since this is located on the side of the printer. This presents a problem, however, in that face-up output is inherently in reverse order; i.e. page 1 is printed first and is on the bottom of the output stack (face-up). This can be addressed by sending the print job to the printer in reverse order, but this has the disadvantage of large time delays for large jobs using today""s software, due to the large memory requirements.
To address the problem, typically the pages are received face-up in order 1-N, and each page is flipped to a face-down orientation to preserve the correct order. This flipping is done by the output device.
It would therefore be an advantage to provide a simple way to deliver printer output in correct order.
Techniques are described for providing a face down orientation of printed media at a normally face up output of a printer. One technique achieves correct order orientation of a print job in a printer having a duplexing function, and includes printing a page of the print job at a print area; passing the page through a duplexing media path to reorient the page in a page down orientation; passing the page through the print area in the page down orientation without conducting a printing operation; and passing the page from the print area to an output area in correct order orientation.
A second technique according to another aspect of the invention achieves face down orientation of a printed page at a normally face up output area of a printer. This technique includes advancing a page from an input source to a print area; conducting printing operations on the page at the print area; transporting the page away from the print area; diverting the page into an auxiliary media path portion and transporting the page, leading edge first, until the trailing edge of the page passes a diverter location; transporting the page in the reverse direction such that the trailing edge now becomes the leading edge, and diverting the present leading edge of the page along a media path leading to the normally face up output, such that the page is presented to the normally face up output in a face down orientation.